From the beginning, CatSpring Yaupon has been dedicated to sustainability in every way. We harvest in areas with plentiful growth so the yaupon can continue to flourish. We work with our local community to provide needed jobs. We minimize our environmental footprint to keep our land healthy for years to come. And that’s just the start.
1. Clean Yaupon. The ingredient list for our three different preparation methods is yaupon. That’s it. Hand-harvested, wild-grown yaupon. All our preparation methods are non-GMO, organic, and kosher. We thoroughly verify every source of our yaupon to match these standards and bring you the best product. Because when you find the best that’s all you need.
2. Short Supply Chain. We keep our supply chain short; pick the leaves in CatSpring, prepare them in-house, and ship them straight to you to enjoy. While longer supply chains offer layers of protection to hide unethical practices and carry larger environmental footprints, shorter supply chains increase visibility of business processes and minimize the environmental impact.
3. Ethical Employment. Early in the days of CatSpring Yaupon, we were aware of how pervasive human trafficking was in our hometown of Houston and how the broken criminal justice system perpetuated the problem. The process we use to harvest and process our yaupon is labor intensive and as we sought out staffers for the job we found the opportunity to take a stand against the exploitation of people. Through our People First employment initiative, we work with parole officers to identify individuals who want to gain valuable experience post-incarceration and create a future that looks different than their past. We also employ women who have a history of generational poverty in our packaging facility.
4. Water Conservation. Short supply chains are better for the environment. Compared to coffee and tea varieties that take up to 140 liters of water throughout their entire production line to make a single cup at home, yaupon uses few resources. Since our yaupon is wild-harvested, the only water used to grow it is natural rainwater. But it’s not just water that we’re saving.
5. Soil Conservation. Soils need variance in plant life to replenish nutrients and minerals over time and time to rest. In the large coffee and tea industries, some fields don’t get that chance. This weakens the soil’s ability to grow new crops and increases the need for fertilizers and new land. As consumer demand grows worldwide, forests are razed to provide more crop land for coffee and tea, endangering native species of plants and animals. Our yaupon comes from wild-grown bushes. They grow where the conditions are best for the yaupon and the local ecosystem. We let the land determine where we harvest and work in partnership with the environment to provide this natural drink.
6. Local Environment. We work with the USDA and regional organizations to develop the best sustainable practices as our company grows. Since yaupon hasn’t been harvested on a large scale before, it’s still uncertain what are the best ways to treat the local environment. When the fields were cleared years ago for farming the native grasses that had extensive root systems were lost. The crop plants with shorter roots allowed the yaupon to grow into the area with greater prevalence than before. We now think that if native grasses are allowed to reclaim some areas, this can help restore the local environment and improve the land’s sustainability.
CatSpring Yaupon is committed to helping our local community and the global community. For us sustainability is leaving both better than we found them. It’s a responsibility to you, our customers, to be transparent in our process and to give you the best product that you can feel good drinking.
